


October

by insistentbass



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Other, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1325008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insistentbass/pseuds/insistentbass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'it’s singular and bold and could burn through every life they have both had, every breath John’s lived and every one that Sherlock’s saved.'</p><p>One version of many set between Leinster Gardens and the airstrip. Series 3 spoilers.</p><p>This hasn't been beta'd or proof read but I need to sleep so I'm posting. Goodnight :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	October

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics: Four Seasons in One Day - Crowded House

_It doesn't pay to make predictions_   
_Sleeping on an unmade bed_   
_Finding out wherever there is comfort there is pain_   
_Only one step away_   
_Like four seasons in one day_   
_Blood dries up_   
_Like rain, like rain_   
_Fills my cup_   
_Like four seasons in one day_

//

 

It’s that kind of dry coldness tonight. The sort that bites through layers of clothing right to the skin even in the beginnings of a mild October, that gives away breath in clouds of white mist and makes the ends of John’s fingers tingle.

Twenty minutes in the taxi was enough and he decides to take the rest on foot, to tread the last few streets and ignore the way each step feels like a pattern he’s already walked before. A thin mist softens the edge of everything into white. Across the road a faceless figure sits hunched beneath the shelter of a doorway, in layers of clothing that are not quite dirty enough. John wonders if it’s one of Sherlock’s - if that nameless person has the digits of a mobile number scribbled on his body somewhere, if he has instructions and a wad of tens in his pocket, if he knows the magic trick to bring back the dead.

Maybe he should turn around. Head home, if that’s the right definition. The smothering weather engulfs and fogs John’s head; he can’t even work out if he’s pissed off or angry or sad or just needs some comfort. And it’s been just over a fortnight since the hospital (since his heart was pulled so publicly from his body, bruised and blackened and now rotting, a slow decay) but Jesus, he could really do with a break. A clean slate, some white noise - just an hour or so, just that, in his old worn out chair with tea in a dirty mug and the threat of impending doom from some meaningless case salting the air.

The teetering pile of stuff he’s been trying to ignore is so high he can’t see a way over it anymore. Sherlock came back from his grave, so long ago now that the stabs of pain have turned into a steady dull ebb, clinging to John’s bones like dying marrow. But then he nearly fell right back into it again, actually flat-lined into unimportant nothingness for whole minutes that John still can’t quite comprehend, hasn’t yet transferred the seconds from hazy memory into reality. He’s given his name to a wife he cannot touch without flinching, her face and body still warm and soft and inviting yet utterly repulsive; with lies seeping from the pores of her skin and the imprint of a gun in her palm and they’re having a _child._

John has no fucking clue what’s going on anymore.

Yeah, he should just turn back. Bury everything like he’s so good at doing, forgive and forget and smile tightly like everything is okay. And perhaps if he were a better man - a _good_ man - he would.

But he isn’t.

Apparently he never has been. Apparently he enjoys the lies and the danger and chooses these things deliberately to hurt himself, relishes the thrill of it so much he’s married it. Betrothed himself to the very type of person he should loathe, has chased through countless streets with Sherlock at his heels and adrenaline pumping his skin. He’s sought it out and made love to it and put a ring on its finger. John’s learning a lot of sharp and awful things about himself, and they’re not as surprising as they should be.

He’s at the stoop of 221B without even knowing how. The sky is threatening rain through the density and it’s too late now even if he did want to run. He stares up at the curtain drawn windows and wonders if the map to his head is in there; pinned out on the walls like the most complex of cases, with coordinates and gridlines connecting all the hidden bits that he’s not yet allowed to see. He imagines Sherlock amid numbers and illegible clues, scribbling over things and rearranging the pieces of his life until they fit better again.

John doesn’t get chance for the moral debate he’d planned to have with himself before knocking on the door because it’s wide open. He steps in and feels the warmth of the place thaw his breath and fingers. The lights are off in the sitting room but he can see a low glow from the kitchen, an Edward Hopper interior of deep shadow and dark corners. His chair is there, watching him from the far side of the room and exactly opposite Sherlock’s again, empty and expectant. Taking slow steps as if he shouldn’t be there, he finds Sherlock at the table, lit by the solitary light of his laptop and surrounded not in the map to John’s mind, but haphazard piles of papers and a lonely lit Bunsen in the centre.

It looks safe and familiar, and something in John’s gut kicks.

 “Mrs Hudson will throw a fit, Bunsen on the table”

For a moment John thinks he’s being ignored - is met by nothing but silence and the hidden hollows of Sherlock’s face lit by artificial light.

 “She’s seen worse”

The man finally voices, looks up and he remembers late nights and barely-mornings; half eaten takeaways and bad coffees in an otherworldly time, calm short moments where Sherlock would sleep rigid in his chair and John would watch and marvel at the gift he’d been given.

But now he simply stands there because he doesn’t know what to say. Instead, he observes just like he’s been taught, does his best to keep his expression blank and unforgiving as he takes in the face before him. It’s a far cry from the tight translucency that had pinched Sherlock’s skin over his bones with the effort of staying alive; the blotchy dead pink has left his tear ducts and the red veins in the whites of his eyes are less prominent, fading with the passing of time and the memory of a singular bursting bullet hole. Now, instead, where the light glances and ebbs at the harsh angles of Sherlock’s chin and cheeks, he looks years younger; the dark remains of night disguising the grey circles around his eyes, innocent, bare as the first page of a book  - and what would John write there, if he could?

“Can’t sleep, then” Sherlock says after a moment, and the deep baritone scratch of his voice tells John he’s not used it for hours. “You look terrible.”

A shrug but no denial - he probably does. In fact, yeah, definitely. Now Sherlock mentions it, John can feel the stubble growing at his chin, doesn’t remember running a comb through his hair before leaving and knows he's wearing the same shirt as yesterday.

“Mm. You, too.”

He gestures to Sherlock’s open robe, clearly the victim of some spilt experiment, and the creased white shirt beneath it that clings to an underfed stomach.

“Been...” Sherlock gestures to the table with the length of his hand, gaze still fixed on John. “...busy”

“Oh yeah, I can see that”  
  
John says, begins to circle his way round the table and deliberately keeps his gaze from the papers because he frankly doesn’t care, couldn’t give a toss what case Sherlock’s been pretending to solve and more so for the fear of seeing Mary’s name there, in black and white deceit. He’s so engrossed in his own careful footsteps and guarded avoidance that he doesn’t hear the laptop snap shut, or a chair pull out, or any extraneous noise, until the smell of peat and strength catches his attention and there’s a tumbler of whisky in his hand.

Apparently they do this, now.

“Why are you here, John?”

Sherlock asks over the rim of his own glass, knocks it back in one and winces with the force of it. John accepts the challenge and downs his own, too tired and worn from the constant friction of revelations to much feel the burn of it. The question doesn’t come as a surprise, as such, but John had wanted to be the one asking, not giving out answers he doesn’t have.

What he had wanted to start with was how - no, _why_ exactly didn’t Sherlock tell him from the hospital bed that it was his wife’s bullet in his chest, two centimetres too close to be only a near-miss and how the hell does that mean she saved his life, and when the fuck did it become normal and acceptable and _John’s_ fault that now he lives with two psychopaths and one of them actually owns a gun? Also what can he possibly come up with, now, to explain his current position in the kitchen of 221B (a kitchen that is no longer his and no more houses his best mug or his secret stash of sugar or his snarky notes taped to the fridge) what in god’s name can he say when really he has no idea if he wants to scream at Sherlock or Mary or himself?

Maybe he should tell Sherlock that. Explain how he doesn’t know how to function right now and can’t quite get his voice steady even when it seems it; _even when it is,_ it still doesn’t sound right, as if his body is shutting down slowly from the inside out so silently that no one else notices.

For a moment John wonders why he didn’t bring a suitcase of clothes with him. It seems stupid, actually, that he didn’t. Mary is alone in their bed but for the growing person inside her. John’s taken his wallet, keys and even turned off his alarm and he has no intention, he realises now, of going back there. Perhaps this would be easier with the right props to hand, a safety blanket of belongings and comforts that serve no purpose.

“You tell me” He challenges instead, finds he has to lift his chin a little to shake the plea from his voice. Because if John says it himself it makes it his fault, and damn if he’s going to add _leaving your pregnant wife_ to the list of shitty things in his head.

Sherlock makes some kind of low rumble in his throat and backs away a couple of paces, out of character as if he’s cut himself off in his head before the reply reaches his mouth. There’s some silence and so John blinks, gestures with open arms for a response he knows is lost in the tunnel of Sherlock’s throat.

“What should I do,”

He settles for, finding that it’s not a question at all, that his voice fills the room quite suddenly with a tension that wasn’t there seconds ago.

“I mean, what can I possibly-”

John cuts himself off with two fingers pressed to his own lips, reassessing his choice of words and rearranging them. There’s so much he needs to say but it’s not all necessarily legible in his brain yet.

 _Start again_ , Sherlock would say. _Focus_.

“Because this is all my fault, yes?” John nods himself because it’s not really a question at all. “I’ve married an assassin and she shot you, just like that - I have her life on a _sodding_ memory stick so what am I supposed to do with all that, hm?"

It comes out much too fast and Sherlock reaches across the table to where he’s left the half bottle of spirit, drags his eyes across John from foot to face as he pours another glass for himself. The gold liquid reminds John of the sun and how it had shone down on him for a just a few precious weeks of white satin and neat flowers before forsaking him completely. His own glass is empty and for some reason still in his hand, such a meaningless thing that it feels ghostly in his fingers. It’s strange how senseless everything seems in the dark of night; how utterly void it is with the knowledge he’s been living such an incomprehensible life, months and days and hours and minutes of deception.

John watches the booze travel down Sherlock’s throat, slower this time, and wonders how many bottles he’s been through in his absence, if he needs to search every corner of the flat for crueller vices.

“Forgive her”

The answer knocks John so off guard that he feels his knee give way a little, covers the slip by grabbing the bottle of whisky from Sherlock’s hand and pouring himself another. He knocks it back again and though he hisses air through his teeth the burn still isn’t there, as if his body’s forgotten how to react appropriately to the pain of it.

“Forgive her, right, yeah of course”

He slams the glass down without meaning to, really, but it gets his point across - Sherlock’s eyes blink at the noise and it’s the little things that give him away.

“Christ, you think it’s so easy” John continues, nodding his head derisively. “You still have no idea, do you, what it feels like to be betrayed, even after all this time and all this _shit_ ”

Anger is such an easy thing for him. It’s like putting on an old coat and finding a fiver in the pocket -it always gives him something, never fails to turn up when he needs it. Words are easier when they’re said in irritation, provoked with an easy alibi. There’s probably some kind of childhood psychological bullshit to explain his reliance on it, but anger makes his words stone and sharp as glass when in truth they’re brittle, just compacted bitter sand. Something in Sherlock’s eyes flashes and John’s sure it’s not just a reflection of the Bunsen in low light, is sure, actually, that there’s a bit of resentment in there somewhere. Interesting. Maybe he can get _that_ to the surface. God knows he’s been trying to get something from Sherlock other than empathy and tolerance, something that doesn’t want to make John try and fix him, find the pieces that went missing during those two years of being dead and alive all at once.

“You forgave _me_ ”

Somehow the negative charge between them has bridged a gap and John no longer needs to tip his chin to meet Sherlock’s eyes - can take in all of him and finds Sherlock irritated and tired, the signs of fracturing cracks where he’s been trying to keep himself hidden but now he’s seeping through, between the gaps in the wall that’s been up ever since he reappeared from the dead.

Has he forgiven him, though? That’s something John hasn’t allowed himself to think about too much. Because yes, he said it, he proclaimed it with the threat of an empty bomb and the pressure of saying things you only have one chance to say - but no, no he can’t be one hundred percent sure that he’s let it all go, or ever will, and that’s precisely why he’s been avoiding it completely. If he can’t truly forgive Sherlock - the man who saved him, the one person at the centre of everything - then who exactly does he have left?

John swallows and means to take a step back but instead the electric pulls him closer, a foot or so and he’s back in the confusing orbit of Sherlock’s presence, back where he belongs and where he never should have left.

 “Yes,” He lies, voice hoarse now from the whisky or the constant bile in his stomach, he can’t tell. “But what you did was just a trick, Sherlock, she put a real bullet in your chest and you died -“  
  
Suddenly he’s outside and there’s pavement, cold concrete to the side of his head and his knees, a ringing in his ears and so many people, suddenly, getting red on their shoes from the steadily expanding pool of blood stemming unreal and too fast from Sherlock’s broken head - and John has to bow his own head, now, in the kitchen of 221B and nearly three years later, standing before the man that was lost and given back and nearly taken from him again. He feels hot prickling behind his eyes and screws his them tight shut against the whole thing, presses his knuckles into the table and concentrates all his strength on the feel of wood against the grooves of his skin, of solid reality instead of blurry sick fictions. And he feels the guilt as if he were the one who pulled the trigger, as if Mary’s hands are his own and they’re bound together - they are, by law and gold, by stretched love and the DNA creating new life for them to shape.

He opens his mouth but Sherlock cuts in, closes fingers around John’s wrist and takes his clenched fist from the table, holds it just there in front of them and John can feel his own blood beating, jumping in his veins against Sherlock’s grip.

“I came back, like before and I always will. Always, John”

That comprehension in eyes that seldom give anything away is just about too much, and John kind of hates it - not because it's not genuine but because it's the same deep understanding look that Mary had given him two days after Sherlock's return. _I know exactly how you feel, I know I know_ but no one actually does, no one possibly can and it makes John want hit something. But he breathes, steadies himself by counting his pulse against strong fingers and reminding the monster inside his chest that even Sherlock hurts sometimes. That maybe he hurts most of all, now.   

They've not done this yet. Not even during those few hazy hours of too much drink and not enough oxygen (one hand on Sherlock's knee and it could have been so easy then). Even though there's a few fingers of whisky buzzing John's teeth it's not nearly enough to warrant this conversation, these words that could easily lead to whole sentences and confessions of desperation and longing and everything that he's been holding in the creases of his worn soul.

John feels as if he's in a dream maybe, except it's much too sharp and Sherlock's face is so clear it hurts his eyes. It could almost all be an illusion; he hasn’t slept right for two days, nor eaten or done much but check his phone and count the amount of words he’s spoken to Mary on one hand. Maybe this is his head backfiring - because it’s been a long time since he’s indulged in the thoughts currently racing there, it’s been nearly three years and several lifetimes since he’s looked at Sherlock and allowed himself to feel.

“You’ll always come back” John echoes, forms with his mouth though it barely registers.

“But it wasn’t your choice, was it? She - fuck - _Mary_ ” (not she or her because Mary is her name and she shares John’s too) “didn’t give you surgery, Sherlock, she gave you a seven percent chance of survival”

Somehow Sherlock’s made himself closer; John feels as if he’s crawling right into him with his eyes so blue and honest, the heat from his shirt sending shivers along his neck. He knows that it’s too late, now, far too acute a situation to be able to turn back and shake it off like falling dust from a quake. Sherlock’s let go of his wrist and so John puts his fingertips to his chest instead; watches his muscles tighten beneath the almost-touch, hears oxygen hiss through the man’s nose, unsteady.

Sherlock doesn’t say a word but that’s fine because John doesn’t want to hear it; he needs to get this out and quick because he’s on the precipice of something he can’t come back from; doesn’t want to come back from, has to fall into because it’s been _just there_ for so long he can’t remember and Sherlock deserves it, now more than he ever has.

“I can’t ever forgive her, for nearly taking away the one person who means-“

His throat feels like sandpaper and flooded with cold waters at the same time, a battle between getting the words out and the frozen wash of pent up emotion they bring. John rubs his eyes and his mouth and anything to keep the years of pain safe beneath his eye lids, but he can’t quite manage not to let it come tumbling from his mouth instead.

“The one person who means _anything_ to me”

There are goosebumps on Sherlock’s bare arms where he’s rolled his sleeves up, neat tiny rows of them and John’s close enough to just reach the pads of his fingers out and read them like Braille, but he doesn’t. Doesn’t really need to because the hitch of Sherlock’s very pulse shockwaves through the room and John can hear the copper blood running through his startled veins, could take his mouth to them and trace every circulation of cells and oxygen if he so wanted, sees the threat of something simultaneously ruinous and terrifying, mirroring from his own eyes to Sherlock’s - and whatever he’s afraid of, John’s afraid of it too.

The smooth weave of Sherlock’s cotton shirt is warm and real as John presses his forehead against it. Has to, really, because looking up means finding that face all open and raw and full of things that fit there so ironically; lines of hurt and joy and what John now recognises as love (love most of all) creasing Sherlock’s eyes and forehead, parting wordless lips. John can feel the sharp of a collar bone beneath his brow and he digs it in harder, tries to remind himself who he is and why this was never a good idea (not then, when everything was honeyed adrenaline and simple, and certainly not now with everything so tangled and sticky with web that neither of them can find the right path out).

“I’m not a good man”

Sherlock finally says, though John decodes it through the vibrations in his chest, the low shake of his skin.

No not wholly good, but better now and cleaner than John. Because John is a cheater if not yet physically then mentally; has been betraying his counterfeit wife since the beginning and being unfaithful to himself for even longer. All Sherlock did was kill himself but didn’t and forgot to tell John; and even though he understands and accepts it, John still cannot let it go, so there must be something very, very wrong with him.

The thought vanishes with a long inhale as two fingers lift his chin, so cold they send sparks of ice from his jaw to his belly. Sherlock looks at him as if he’s trying not to, as if every second he does is a second he will regret, a second that’s painful and wanting.

Sherlock keep the pads of his fingers in the dip of his chin and puts his cheek to John’s own; the friction of their meeting skin makes John think of fire and the short minutes of midnight. The soft of Sherlock’s lips grazing his ear sends such a run of unexpected electric heat through him that air forces from his throat, and it could be a sob if he let it.

“But I will give you whatever you need”

 _What do I need_ _,_ John thinks, but before he can voice the words he’s already answering himself; flattening his palms against Sherlock’s chest and mouthing the cotton of his shirt collar, it catches on his fleshy lips and he wonders if he’s strong enough to teeth open the buttons just there; break right through Sherlock’s rib cage to the heart of it all.

Just standing and _being_ suddenly feels hyper real and inside out and Jesus - _Jesus,_ Sherlock’s shaking against him, his whole body pushed so close to his own that John fears if he listened hard enough he could hear his own name threading through Sherlock’s tendons, could note the sound of heat and desire it makes as it courses through his blood.

And yeah, fuck, he’s married and he’s having a child and at the end of it all he loves Mary, innocently and irreversibly. But this, whatever this need is that he and Sherlock hold inside them it’s on a different level of existence, it’s in a different heart to the one that still wants to cradle Mary’s warm treacherous body close during the night, it’s singular and bold and could burn through every life they have both had, every breath John’s lived and every one that Sherlock’s saved.

“Because I like danger, right?”

Though the words leave his lips they get a bit lost in the stitch of Sherlock’s shirt, get weakened and sound almost like he’s asking to believe it, a poor excuse for something that he could never be acquitted for.

Sherlock huffs a breath that warms the space below his jaw red hot and leaves just as quickly, a ghost of something that could be laughter in the right air. Except it’s more like the sob that’s slipping from John’s mouth every time he speaks, a voice from the monstrous want inside him that feeds on Sherlock’s close body and blurry skin.

“ _Like_ it?”

Sherlock asks, pulls back his cheek and lets his fingers drop from John’s chin - and John can’t help but look into his eyes for confirmation of his own existence reflected back in them; that this is actually happening, this iridescent version of reality where his own palm has drifted to the dull bullet hole on Sherlock’s chest, and his teeth are aching with the need to drag them along the exposed plane of skin just in front of him.

“You’re an _addict_ , John”

Somewhere outside a siren goes past, distant and meaningless; a floor below Mrs Hudson sleeps or wakes or sits in the middle of a soother induced coma, many streets away Mary palms the naked bump of her belly with her eyes screwed tight shut and miles and miles away from them people live and die and burn through their time - but none of it reaches John, none of it ever really has, since Sherlock. Nothing so bright or so painful has he ever felt.

And there’s nowhere to hide from this blunt desire. He won’t blame it on adrenaline or anger or some kind of sick revenge for the deceit of his wife, because he’d be lying to himself and what exactly is the point of that? John’s here to escape, here because he wants Sherlock and he always has, and somehow they’ve grown so far apart that he can barely remember the smell of Sherlock’s sweat and he should - god damn, he should.

John passes a tongue over his lip and lets his eyes focus into the mountain snow blue that’s right there in front of him, waits ‘til it’s clear and sharp and so consuming that he couldn’t possibly believe that anything else exists.

“So give me my fix, then”

It’s funny how seconds can feel like years, and stars implode and are reborn in the time it takes Sherlock to let his mountainous eyes go black with want and the oxygen leave the space of his mouth in a sharp exhale, as if he’s been waiting for years and lifetimes before they even met to hear those words.

First John feels the rough of Sherlock’s hand on his face then the back of his neck, because somehow he’s managed to close his own eyes as if doing so will keep in the line he just spoke; and then there’s the blood pumping in his own ears and through his body like a building storm, gathering momentum and such tight need that it’s almost painful.

Maybe Sherlock speaks but it’s lost in the scarce graze of his parted mouth against John’s philtrum, and he doesn’t kiss him just yet; John can feel the flesh of Sherlock’s lips against his own like he so wants but cannot taste the inside of his hot desperate mouth because Sherlock’s just pressing himself there and breathing, waiting for something on the edge of a breaking wave - and if it’s a challenge then John’s going to fucking take it.

So he does He takes Sherlock by the jaw and angles him properly, pushes his tongue past those incisors, moves their lips together so hard he tastes Sherlock's curses before they're words, groans that send tiny vibrations against John’s gums and he's pushed backwards by strong arms until the dip of his back hits the fridge, and he’s pretty sure they just knocked over the Bunsen but shit _-_

“Oh, _shit_ ”

John confirms into the corner of Sherlock’s open mouth and it gets swallowed, taken whole and dissolved between their tongues. They’re tasting each other and though it sounds wrong in his head John’s whole body speaks differently, his lungs expand and contract and ache with the effort of doing so, he’s treading deep water and forgetting how to breathe and Sherlock is not broken, after all, but shattering slowly from the inside out; John can hear it in the small expletives and moans shadowed with his name, see it in the deep lines of worry etching his face, the tremors shaking Sherlock’s fingers as they reach for John’s shirt buttons and don't quite make the right movements to prise them from their holes.

Any way he tries to justify his aching body and greedy hands doesn't make it feel better; every point at which Sherlock touches him (chest to elbow to bicep and shoulder) is painful and delicious and puts more cracks in John's already fractured nature, leylines of trauma that he's sure will be visible afterwards, will mark him out to Mary and Greg and every person in the street as a bad man, a fraud.

The pressure of seeking lips just below his ear drowns all that out for some unexplainable length of time and he realises instead how much he's fucked up; how he should have waited forever and after the end of time for Sherlock to come back to him (because he knew, he just didn't _know_ it) and now he's paying the price, penance for not having the courage to hurt and hurt until Sherlock found it right to come home.

John feels the wet salt from his eyes only when Sherlock's cheek brushes his, the hot of it terribly loud against his skin. Lips and deft hands go still against him in the half-light and for the first time he feels like a stranger, some other person who doesn't belong in London or Baker Street, and certainly not in Sherlock's open and willing heart.

"I can't -"

The words are stuck because he doesn't want to speak them, would rather have his mouth to Sherlock's and their worlds colliding, new and wrong and all the things he's wanted since the beginning. It's unfair and John knocks his head back against the fridge, once, twice, screws his eyes so tight that tiny white daggers stab his lids.

“Would you like me to step away?” Sherlock asks, low and miles away from the controlled man John knows.

But he’s not stepping away - Sherlock’s giving him the question yet seems unable to even slightly pretend he’s capable of fulfilling it; has his hands on John’s waist and his mouth somehow ghosting the stretched line of his neck, lips still for awful seconds before they touch again to the skin there, close and slow and because they are magnets, pulling towards each other from opposite poles.

John prises himself from the back of his eyelids, blinks away his treacherous tear and says _no_ , then _no no no no_ and kisses Sherlock’s mouth again with surety and guilt sodden vigour; pushes the dirtied robe from tall shoulders and thumbs his way through buttons until he’s got fingerprints on Sherlock’s chest, small nail crescents on the space just above hip bone and Sherlock continues to shake against him like a rattling storm. John’s torn between right and wrong and what those things even mean, cannot in the haze of blinding tumultuous greed find the part of him that will drown in self hatred later - and he’s tried, he tried for whole seconds to physically knock Sherlock out of his head, said he couldn’t when he can (oh he can) and none of those tiny irrelevant acts of nobility will mean anything in the end so why bother, why deny what’s already happening, what’s already always been _._

Sherlock is making it so simple: with his thigh slipped between John’s own, loose tongue dripping hushed curses and hopeless breaths, fingers now methodical and precise and working open John’s clothing one by one, both bare chests and shivering into each other. The wrinkled taught skin that’s healed not quite so neatly over Sherlock’s bullet hole is alien and ugly, but John puts his thumb to it anyway, cannot link the damage to the once gentle hands of his wife. Instead he measures the precious millimetres to vital organs, counts the major arteries and all the vessels that could have erupted and spilt the blood now running hot and needy in Sherlock’s body, pretends his touch is healing and repairing the vandalism that John somehow feels responsible for.

They’ve made it to the back of some door and John’s never done this before, not even once in the stereotypical loneliness of soldier dorms, and fuck it’s very different - very new and yet so very familiar because it’s Sherlock. Sherlock whose hand he’s taken and pulse he’s touched and body he’s pressed against many times before; who he knows now is undeniably his and his alone, and who John wishes more than anything he could give himself to entirely in return.

“Give me your hand”

Sherlock says, doesn’t wait for an answer and his voice is rough and so far past low that John barely hears it anyway. Only knows that his hand is taken and cradled in a slightly larger one and then he’s circling Sherlock’s cock, surreal and heavy and they’re both moving together, constantly in every shadow of space until close is no longer a choice but a necessity, until John’s trying to both push himself into Sherlock’s hold and grind into his hip, not enough and far too much.

It will be over too fast and John wishes he could slow it down, that he had the strength, the conviction to take Sherlock to his bed and lay his body down - but the fast and lusty drive of it makes it easy, makes it less difficult to imagine that this is three years ago and Mary doesn’t exist, that they’ve just got back from a case and there’s takeaway going cold in the living room because they’re too exhausted and high on adrenaline to eat. For these precious moments of sin John can imagine they’re both slightly younger and less broken, with nothing hanging between them but tension and bare flesh.

Even if John were brave enough to slow it down he couldn’t. Sherlock is like a vast still lake, inky black and inexplicable, a body of deep waters that John’s disturbed with his lips and hands, gentle surface ripples turning to violent waves and now there’s no stopping it - a tsunami of pent up desire that John can do nothing but swim in, swim swim swim until his arms give in and he drowns from the pull of it on his lungs and heart.

The sweet vibrations of a whimper from breathy throat to the shell of John’s ear and he does - he does drown, swallows gallons of dark water; comes in Sherlock’s hand and shakes and shakes, reaches a palm to the solid door behind to anchor himself, keep him conscious as he works Sherlock harder - “ _Come on, for me”_ \- and presses his nose into sweaty curls as warm mess spills into his fingers.

In dreams or maybe stories, planets collide and gunpowder reacts in colourful sparks and everything intensifies a million fold. In reality, nothing happens but the peaking and breaking of desire, a small bending of time into ecstasy before the chill and silent atmosphere of the kitchen comes back into focus. They breathe only because they have to, and John so wishes he didn't. In and out they recycle invisible elements, round in circles until the air feels less tight and more empty.

John doesn’t know what to say. Sherlock takes his hand and this time cleans it on his trouser leg, takes each individual finger and wipes the evidence off. His eyes are blurry and hurt, and all he can do is watch Sherlock do up both their trousers. John’s still pressed into him, forehead in the crook of his neck and clutching at sweat dampened chest like he’s about to disappear.

Then Sherlock holds him. Just there, with one hand to the small of his back and the other weaving through his hair. Moments of insignificant time pass and John tries to think of Mary - reconstructs her face in his mind to force himself to feel guilty, to push Sherlock aside, pull on his shirt and leave. But every time her features sharpen they split and fall apart, so John loses himself in the pores of skin his cheek and nose and mouth are pressed to, breathes them in and feels the tiny hairs of Sherlock’s neck stand on end.

“You’ll stay here tonight, and in the morning you will go back to Mary”

Whispered and so certain from Sherlock’s lips that they punch John in the gut and he can’t breathe for a moment. Actually feels his stomach tighten and his body wash with nausea, head dizzy and spinning where it’s hidden in the crook of a shoulder.

John wants to say _how can I_ , how can he do that when he’s so torn; when he’s now realised his choice to move on from Sherlock in his absence was not a choice at all, he never made it and never let any part of him go, and now everything he grieved for could be a reality - except there’s a child, he _will_ have a child and though the foundations are already rotten, there’s no ounce of John’s soul that could ruin the fragile family he’s built around himself. Even if it means losing his heart again.

Eventually they part and Sherlock leads him by the wrist to his bedroom. John says _stay awake with me_ so Sherlock does, and they spend the night in the silent spaces between time and darkness. In some other dimension they talk about old cases, relive private jokes they will no longer share, discuss the past and the memories and anything but the now; the present and the future than John can’t distinguish or fathom in the sheets of Sherlock’s bed. They don’t touch, though. Not again. Not even when night is becoming morning and he can’t quite keep his eyes open anymore. Not even when he’s asleep and Sherlock is still bright as day, and could do whatever he so pleased. Never again, because they’re addicts and quitting cold is the only way.

When John wakes in the morning to find he has actually slept, Sherlock is gone. He quickly showers, pulls on clothes he will later store in a box under his bed, and goes to leave. The fridge he hours ago had his back to is still there and still normal. The only addition is a bright yellow sticky note, loud and lonely, and a black marker on the table.

John moves his hand to the pen, turns it around in his fingers once or twice. Leaving a note means leaving a bit of himself behind, a clue in case he needs to find his way home. With a deep breath that reaches his shoulders, John picks the sticky paper from the fridge, he flattens it and - _shit_ , curses as the blade edge of it cuts into the fine layer of skin on his forefinger.

Wine red gently ebbs from the tiny wound and he watches it, the slow purposeful path it makes down the ridges of the wrinkles in his flesh. He blinks and suddenly feels that nausea again, like he’s breathing backwards and the world is moving too fast beneath his feet. Like a quick fast rush of air all his choices pass before him and he falters, senses the sea sick feeling that this one little decision could mean so much. Yet how can it, this insignificant post-it note, a dead tree shredded and pressed, dyed a sickening neon. But then, how could it not, _how could it not,_ when every small breath he’s taken for the past five years has lead him to it?

A child, he thinks. His son. His daughter.

John sticks the wordless note back to the fridge, places the pen exactly where it was, and does not look back.

 

 

//

 

When he’s standing in an air field not saying any of the things he wants to, John wonders how many times he’s supposed to let Sherlock leave him before he’s allowed to give up. Before he’s allowed to move into Sherlock’s heart completely, sit there in his old chair and close the doors behind him.

In the end, he doesn’t even get chance to open his own car door before there’s static on the ground, and the horizon of a private jet tips back into his line of sight. Everything feels full to the edges, and John’s buzzing with it, his body singing with relief.

Mary Watson watches the plane turn, tightens her grip on her husband’s forearm and doesn’t let go. Digs her nails in hard until she can feel her own pulse in her fingertips, and tries to hold on as the wind brings Sherlock Holmes back to life again.

 

 

 

-


End file.
